


A Constant

by Bellkat



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Autistic Keith (Voltron), Bonding, Homesick Lance (Voltron), Homesickness, M/M, Stars, homesick keith (voltron), klance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-08
Updated: 2016-08-08
Packaged: 2018-08-07 09:07:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,075
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7709185
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bellkat/pseuds/Bellkat
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Keith liked the silence.  He always had.  The stillness of the night, the blanket of darkness, it was calming. The emptiness of it left little room for distraction or over stimulation.  And although some of his old classmates would say otherwise, Keith never found it to be lonely.  He had the stars with him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Constant

**Author's Note:**

> I can't believe it's another voltron fic I need to stop... I fell in love with the Autistic!Keith headcanon and wanted to give it a try. This is my first time writing an autistic character so any advice/criticism is more than appreciated! Also this took 5ever cuz I can't write romantic feelings for shit haha considering, i don't think this one's too bad. Enjoy!

Keith let out a long sigh as he attempted to dry off his hair with a towel.  He’d just washed up in the showers near the training room after a couple hours of training.  He was exhausted.

It was late into the evening and the rest of the castle’s inhabitants were asleep.  Keith should’ve been doing the same, but ever since he’d left the garrison and began living on his own Keith’s concept of appropriate sleep schedules had sort of melted away.  He had been freed of the strict regimen and saw no need to force himself to sleep when his mind chose to wander late into the night.

Keith liked the silence.  He always had.  The stillness of the night, the blanket of darkness, it was calming. The emptiness of it left little room for distraction or over stimulation.  And although some of his old classmates would say otherwise, Keith never found it to be lonely.  He had the stars with him.

Keith walked towards his room, thoughts of his soft bed occupying his mind.  He listened to the faint hum of the castle that filled the hallways, and the echoes of each step on the tiled floor.  The lights in the hall cast long shadows that draped the walls and creeped along the floor.  This was his favourite part of the night, when the castle was empty of distractions and he could truly enjoy it.

Keith stopped.  There was a soft light coming from the room up ahead that caused a disruption in the pattern of the shadows.  It was coming from the room where the group practiced meditation.  What was anyone doing in there?  There was no training to be done with that equipment by oneself, and certainly not at this hour.

“Hey-” Keith’s voice faltered as he reached the door and saw inside.  It was amazing.  The room had become a night sky, full of stars. And not just any stars, Keith realized, but Earth’s stars.  His stars.  And lying down in the middle of it all was, “Lance?”

Lance opened his eyes and propped himself up on his elbows.  Just like that, the vibrant, dark sky vanished from the room, leaving them with nothing but the cold, white walls of the ship.  

“Keith? What’re you doing up this late?”

“I could ask you the same thing.  Don’t you need you’re beauty sleep?”

“Ha ha.” Lance said flatly.  His arms fell out to his side and he spread out on to his back once more.

Keith paused momentarily. His eyes flitted from Lance to the direction of his room.  He felt a pang of homesickness.

“How did you do that?” Keith asked softly.  His eyes were drawn back up to the ceiling. “The sky, it looked so real...”

“It was a little trick I learned when Coran made me help clean up the ship.  You can rig up the system so that your memories are projected into the entire room.”  Lance stretched an arm upwards with closed eyes.  Once more, the room became transformed and the deep blue night sky bloomed.  “I come here sometimes when I can’t sleep.”

Keith stepped into the room. His eyes travelled across the room, he tried to look at every star individually.  As if, in doing so, the stars would remain in this sky so long as Keith remembered them. Eventually Keith’s gaze made its way around the room and was redirected to the ground.  And that’s when Keith noticed that there were shapes beside Lance on the floor.  As the red paladin moved further into the room he realized that the shapes were people.

“Is that... your family?”  He asked.

“Yeah...”

“Do you miss them?”

Lance glanced over at Keith who now sat beside him, still eyeing the stars.

Fatigue seemed to have taken hold of both paladins, overriding their rivalry, leaving room for sleepy thoughts to hang in the air.

“We used to go on these camping trips together,” Lance said, “my siblings and I.  All 5 of us would be squeezed into a van with our gear.  At least once per trip, after dinner, we’d go on a hike and find the best place to watch the sunset.  We’d just sit and laugh until the sun went down and the stars scattered the sky...  This one time, it was so cold that we ended up bringing blankets,” Lance smiled wistfully, “We were all huddled up underneath them, well into the evening.  The stars were exceptionally bright that night.  It was one of our best trips.”

Keith couldn’t help but smile, ever so slightly, at the recounting of Lance’s story.  He looked over at Lance who seemed to be lost in thought.  His eyes fixed on the artificial sky; the way the stars reflected in them made it seem as though they held the universe.

They sat in comfortable silence, until Lance spoke. “What about you?”

“What about me?” Keith asked.

“Don’t you miss it?  Earth?”

They turned to look at each other and their eyes met.

“I...  In a way.”  Keith said as he looked down at a loose thread on his shirt.

Lance waited patiently.

“The thing is, I don’t have a lot to miss in the same way you do.”  Keith picked at the stray thread and pulled it free.  “But, when I look up at the night sky here, and I don’t recognize the stars looking back, I feel so...”

“Lost.” Lance said.

Keith nodded. His gaze returned to the sky above.  “Growing up I was always moving around, and although the terrain would change, the night sky never did.  It was my one constant.  When I looked up to the sky at night, I felt more at home then than I’d ever felt elsewhere.  Seeing the sky like this again, it looks so real, like... home.”

He reached his hand up as if to grasp the light, to anchor himself once again and find home.  Except as he looked up through his fingers, he could feel home slipping further and further away as he drifted endlessly in the vast expanse of space.  His arm fell to his side.

Lance’s hand brushed against Keith’s.  “It might not be the same, but you know, you’ll always have a home with us.”

Keith’s thoughts were redirected to the warmth of their connecting fingers.  It felt like an anchor.  A constant.

Keith let himself smile.  With a small whisper, he said  “Thanks.”

 


End file.
